Robin's nest

The female Robin nesting in a bush in the Rose Garden can just be seen. There might be a chance of a better picture on a cloudy day without interference from the sunlit leaves.

The Blackbird in the Rose Garden is the best singer in the park. He has to compete with noise pollution from the Bluetooth speakers of the nearby rollerskaters, but the directional microphone manages to exclude most of the din.

A Song Thrush hopped around beside the path opposite the Buck Hill shelter. It didn't seem to be worried by having a camera pointed at it.

A Wren beside the leaf yard was disturbed by the camera, and I got it just as it was about to dive into the brambles.

The female Little Owl at the Round Pond looked out gravely from her favourite branch in the lime tree.

The wind was quite strong in the afternoon and a pair of Great Crested Grebes on the Serpentine bounced in little choppy waves.

Ahmet Amerikali got a good picture of a grebe with a fish. Probably the fish, resembling a perch but with no stripes, is a ruffe.

Yet more Coot chicks: these were in the reeds under the dead willow by the Italian Garden.

The precarious nest on a chain at the island, propped against a moored rowing boat, is still intact but the Coots don't seem to have laid any eggs.

The repair to the electric pump that works the waterfall in the Dell has delighted the Moorhens, which now have some fast flowing water to wash in.

A pair of Mandarins wandered through the daisies beside the Round Pond. I don't know whether this is the pair I thought were nesting on the other side of the lake by the Henry Moore sculpture, and I was wrong about that. They wanted to be fed, but all the Mandarins do.

The Egyptian Geese by the boat hire platform are down to one gosling, sadly the last of an original sixteen.

A Dark-Edged Bee Fly fed on a clump of garlic mustard in the Italian Garden.

Flowers and new leaves on a Norway maple ...

... and a plane.

 

Some mystery pictures that readers may be able to explain. Sean Gillespie photographed a Starling with something that seems too short and blunt to be a worm.

A detail from another shot shows what seem to be a pair of mandibles. Is it some kind of caterpillar or larva? Update: L. Fairfax has ident6ified it as a crane fly larva.

And this tiny object was on the trunk of a plum tree at the Triangle. It looks sinister but my guess is that it's a clematis seed.